this lately great empire. A war carried on against a part of our fellow-subjects, whose members at least equal a fifth of the whole, and who, in extent of country, so far exceeds the size of Britain, that the comparison of her is but as a speck in the disk of the sun. I will not dwell on the disadvantages our army must labour under from the far-extended distance of the war; a common map, to the commonest understanding, must demonstrate more than rhetorick can paint. But, my Lords, it has been your pleasure to enter into this war; the matter has been laid before you, and often has been debated; and your Lordships, in your judgment, have deemed it necessary to correct the saucy freedom of high-minded sons, grown up to manly age, to check in your American children that independent spirit, that strange love of liberty, which, when permitted to take root, does so infatuate mankind, and which has long been the honour and safety of this Isle. You have thought it right to curb their ideas of property, which led them to imagine we have no right to take any part of their property from them without their free consent. My Lords, I respect the decisions of the majority of this House; but if those decisions may have arisen from any peculiar circumstances, now no more existing; if they may have sprung from false or mistaken intelligence; if the whole disposition of things, from various accidents and events, may have become totally different, perhaps it may not be unworthy your Lordships’ wisdom to reconsider what you have decided, to revise your judgments, to retrace the steps we may too hastily have trod. My Lords, in the beginning of our unhappy contests with America, those who debated the matter on the side of the ruling power of Government, stated, not only the necessity, but the great facility of forcing to a compliance with all the demands of Government, such Colonies as should dare to offer their vain resistance; we were told they had not strength for war, they had not means of war, that they had not union among themselves; that they wanted money, that they wanted discipline, that they wanted officers; and, to sum the whole, to make them contemptible even as submissive subjects, that they possessed not the courage to face a British soldier, whose birth on this side the Atlantick endowed him with that intrepid spirit an American, whom even necessity had inured to toils, could never aspire to reach. The decisions, my Lords, of Administration, gave them union; the refusal to hear their petitions combined the whole in a firm knot of calm, deliberate, desperate determination to resist. Money, which is but the type of property, was soon supplied by a type of equal use; even personal freedom gave way to publick security, and personal property was sacrificed to the necessities of the rising State. The disaffection was general, and British Governours now no more administer law in British America. How true the charge of wanting a martial spirit proved, let those relate who first saw the blood of civil war spilled at Lexington. To those who saved the honour of the day, at the bloody forcing of the lines on Bunker’s Hill; to those who saw the British valour checked, may I safely refer for a full confutation of the absurd supposition that men, descended from the same line as ourselves, whose all is at stake, who think their cause just, would, like the most enervated Asiatick tribe, yield a bloodless victory. My Lords, the history of human nature teaches us, that the greatest talents often lie hid in the most disguised obscurity, till accident, till the bustle of the times, calls forth the genius, and lights the etherial spark; then do these meteors cast an unexpected blaze: an apothecary’s late apprentice leads forth armies, displays the warrior’s skill, the warrior’s intrepidity, and meets a death a Roman might have envied; another, who, in peaceable times, might have never risen to greater praise than a jockey’s skill, amidst every rigour of an inclement season, in an inclement country, astonishes us with a march a Hannibal would have admired, and carries the alarm of war to the walls of a great city, which must probably have yielded to the boldness of the undertaking, had not a Carleton saved it. I am not making a panegyrick on American prowess, though great achievements, even by an enemy, will ever meet my praise; but, my Lords, these are facts incapable of dispute.

To come now, my Lords, to that which has cast the deepest stain on the glory of the British arms, to that which must rouse the indignation of all who feel for her disgrace— the Army of Britain, equipped with every possible essential of war; a chosen army, with chosen officers, backed by the power of a mighty fleet, sent to correct revolted subjects; sent to chastise a resisting city; sent to assert Britain’s authority,—has, for many tedious months, been imprisoned within that town by the Provincial Army, who, their watchful guards, permitted them no inlet to the country; who braved all their efforts and defied all their skill and abilities in war could ever attempt. One way, indeed, of escape was left: the fleet is yet respected; to the fleet the army has recourse; and British Generals, whose names never met with a blot of dishonour, are forced to quit that town which was the first object of the war, the immediate cause of hostilities, the place of arms, which has cost this nation more than a million to defend. We are informed of this extraordinary event by a Gazette, published by authority from Government, in which it is related that General Howe had quitted Boston; no circumstances mentioned to palliate the event; no veil but that of silence to cast over the disgrace. But, my Lords, though the Government account is short and uncircumstantial, yet private intelligence, publick report, on which, till it is with authenticity denied, I must rely, informs us that General Howe quitted not Boston of his own free will; but that a superior enemy, by repeated efforts, by extraordinary works, by fire of their batteries, rendered the place untenable. I mean not the most distant censure on him; his reputation stands fixed on too firm a basis to be easily shaken. I do believe all that in that situation could by the best officers be attempted, was tried to the utmost. But, my Lords, circumstances obliged him to quit that post he could not possibly maintain. The mode of the retreat may do the General infinite honour; but it does dishonour to the British nation. Let this transaction be dressed in what garb you please, the fact remains, that the army which was sent to reduce the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, has been driven from the Capital; and that the standard of the Provincial Army now waves in triumph over the walls of Boston. My Lords, so extraordinary an event, so contrary to all the sanguine promises of Administration, calls for a full explanation; the publick have a right to expect it; your Lordships have a right to demand it. If the Ministry are still determined to keep silence, they make themselves responsible for all the accidents of the war. My Lords, the business I have to trouble you with this day is, to desire a fair state of the matter. It is not vain curiosity prompts; it is in order that this House, knowing all the circumstances that attended this transaction, may be enabled, as his Majesty required of them in his speech at the opening of the session, to give advice becoming the importance of the occasion. Were it for my own satisfaction, I might rest contented with the detail that from private accounts I have seen; I could be content with knowing that the fire from the enemy’s batteries, which began on the 2d of March, threatened ruin to the town; that the shells were so well directed as to make it demonstration that the engineers of the enemy were well versed in the science of destruction. That the continuation of that bombardment rendered it absolutely necessary for the British Army to make some decisive effort; that the resolution taken was worthy the name of Howe, worthy the British spirit; a storm arose, baffled their efforts, and delayed the attack; a storm fortunate perhaps for this country, which preserved for nobler ends many brave men who must have perished in an attempt exceeding human power. When the storm ceased, a new work appeared, of such amazing strength, raised as if by the enchanter’s wand, in the space of a night, that wisdom forbade the attack. One hope remained to save the British Army, and a retreat by sea was found necessary. To refer to the Gazette: Government there tells us, with all the cool indifference with which might have been related the removal of a regiment in England from one place of country quarters to another, that on the 7th of March General Howe, took a resolution to remove from Boston to Halifax; and the embarkation was effected on the 17th, without the least interruption from the Rebels. My Lords, I do admit the fact; no shot was, I believe, fired from the enemy during the embarkation. Whether this arose from policy, whether from an unwillingness unnecessarily to expose the Provincial Army to the desperate valour of the British troops, whom necessity of self-defence, whom the mortification of being forced to quit the place, whom shame, whom every honourable passion must have armed with more than common courage; or whether, by some tacit convention between the